


waking up

by Withpetals_withblood



Series: despite the odds [3]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Blood, Blood Kink, Blood Magic, Consensual Sex, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Ritual, Shameless Smut, The trio is mentioned in passing, pynch centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 20:03:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9564203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Withpetals_withblood/pseuds/Withpetals_withblood
Summary: Ronan has woken up beside people before. Just not like this. He's even woken up beside Adam before. Just not like this.





	

The Barns was either quiet or it wasn't. It lacked an in between.

Ronan usually woke up to barely obstructed silence - birds in trees, hooves on soft dirt, Chainsaw in her cage, Opal clambering around downstairs in the kitchen. Other times he woke up to a crash when Opal couldn't reach a cereal box, or music from his stereo after he rolled over on the remote, or the front door opening and Adam's shoes squeaking on wood floors.

This morning, after falling asleep at 2 a.m, Ronan woke up early to the soft sounds of Adam chattering at his cell phone. There were other voices alongside Adam's. 

Light came in through the window and dripped over the bed, where Ronan and Adam still laid together.

"What've you been doing these past few weeks?" Blue.

"Workin', getting my reading in before the semester starts and hanging out with Ronan," Adam said. 

"Where are you?" That was Henry. "And what is that?"

"This?" Adam shifted next to him.

The other voices went quiet. 

Gansey spoke up. "I don't get to see him sleep often," he said fondly. 

"I'm awake, Dick." Ronan cracked his eyes open and blinked at Adam, who held the phone away from them, video chatting.

Three faces huddled close together on the screen. Ronan lied on his stomach, one arm pillowed under his face, the other draped over Adam's stomach under the blanket. Blue tilted her head, a soft smile on her face. Gansey cleaned his glasses on the hem of his shirt, grinning at his lap. Henry quirked a brow.

"You guys are totally naked, aren't you?" Henry leaned in close to the phone and flashed his teeth.

"It's 7 in the morning on a Sunday, so." Adam shrugged. He played with Ronan's fingers, spread out above his belly button. "When will you guys be back?"

Ronan scooted closer, resting his chin on Adam's shoulder so he could properly look at the screen. 

"Two weeks," Gansey said. "Anything new in the...ah, how do I say this?"

"Anything weird?" Blue remedied. 

Ronan arched a brow. 

"One of Ronan's dream things heats up when you use it," Adam purred. 

Ronan dug his nails into the top of his hand. "And Cabeswater's talking to us."

Henry was the only one that laughed. Blue and Gansey were too busy stumbling over themselves in different octaves and variations of _what how_ and _when._

"We'll call you later," Adam said, laughing through it as Ronan snaked his hand between his legs. "Yeah, we'll call. It's too much to explain. Bye."

"Tell Ronan to answer his phone!" Gansey hollered. 

"Enjoy your threesome vacation," Ronan snapped. He loved watching Adam laugh, and right now Adam was laughing effortlessly, beautifully. He grinned at the ceiling and let Ronan take the phone and toss it on the carpeted floor. Adam's laugh was quiet and true, the kind that brought smiles to other people. Even Ronan. Especially Ronan. 

Ronan's sharp smile curved across his face. He felt the lift in his cheeks, the softness of his gaze as he crawled over Adam and shook his head. "One of Ronan's dreams things heats up," he mocked, tone playful and scolding. His nose bumped Adam's cheek. Their chests pressed when they breathed. 

Adam laughed harder. His eyes squeezed shut. His head tipped back against the pillow. 

Ronan would never get used to this. Not to the morning sunshine coming through the window. Not for the way it made Adam look, hazy and young and new. Not the warm sheets and bareness, not the other bare body underneath him. Not the smell of another boy - of Adam, or his laugh this early, or anything else. How could Ronan get used to something like this? 

"Do you work?" Ronan mumbled. He leaned down, met halfway when Adam craned up.

"No." Adam laughed through it, surprised with his own answer. "I have the day off, actually."

"You? A day off?"

Adam kissed him slow. His hands wandered over Ronan's hips to the backs of his thighs. 

"Does that mean we can go back to sleep?" Ronan tilted his head a fraction, eyelids still heavy.

"You? Sleep?" Adam countered. Ronan's lips tightened. "I'm kidding," Adam whispered. "Yeah, we can go back to sleep."

The Barns was still quiet, fading in and out of slumber. Ronan was the same for once. He flopped down next to Adam and closed his eyes. Adam's hands drifted over his side and settled on his ribcage. Their breath played across chins and cheeks, necks and noses. Usually Ronan would've been stirred by it, but just as he was falling back to sleep, Adam scooted closer. The hand on Ronan's ribs smoothed up his spine. Adam tucked his face under Ronan's chin and exhaled a contented sigh.

Ronan didn't remember falling asleep. But Ronan remembered waking up, and ruining their Sunday morning. 

"Ronan," Adam said urgently. "Ronan, c'mon, wake up."

There was something slick on his hands. His chest felt tight.

"Ronan!"

Ronan opened his eyes. Adam pulled on his arms. He grabbed Ronan's hands and spread his fingers, set his thumb against his jaw and pushed one way then the other.

"It's not mine," Ronan rasped.

Adam stopped searching Ronan's body for wounds.

Ronan closed his eyes, because he didn't want to look at Adam. He didn't want to look at anything, not himself either.

"Who's is it?" Adam asked.

"Dream-me. Another me. Don't worry about it."

"You're covered in blood, don't tell me not to worry."

Ronan's eyes flashed open, hard gaze pointed at Adam. "You've seen worse."

Adam swallowed. "Yeah, I have."

The bedroom door swung open. Opal heaved in deep breaths, her wide eyes wild and frantic.

She rambled something in Latin. _Stop fighting him!_

 _It wasn't a fight. It's over._ Ronan snapped.

"What's over?" Adam asked, catching on to the last word.

"He fights!" Opal yelled. She jutted her index finger at Ronan. 

"Opal, go find the elk," Ronan bit. 

She narrowed her eyes at him.

 _Now, girl._ Ronan said harshly in Latin.

Opal snapped her teeth at him and left, her hooves clanking on the stairs, the wood floors, the porch. 

"Ronan, what're you doing?" Adam sat up. 

He still didn't want to look at himself, but the blood was warm. It was under his fingernails and smeared on his chest. He felt Adam's finger drag through a splatter of it on his stomach. "Surviving, Parrish."

"It feels weird," Adam said. His palm glided Ronan's abdomen again, through the blood, under his belly button. 

Ronan scolded himself for thinking it felt like anything more than a hand on his stomach.

"It's not getting cold, it's almost...it burns, almost." Adam lifted his blood covered hand to his mouth. 

Ronan's arm shot up. His fingers snatched Adam's wrist before he could put his bloodied fingers to his lips. He squeezed hard, jaw flexed, unforgiving gaze pinned to Adam. Adam looked back at him, just as menacing, just as dark. 

"Blood magic is powerful," Adam said.

Ronan's nostrils flared. "You think that'll wake the forest up? Blood magic? You ingesting my fucked up dream shit?"

"Sex magic reconstructed it," Adam said matter-of-factly. "So, yeah. I think it could."

"I didn't mean for us to..." Ronan stammered, his grip on Adam tightening. "That wasn't - I didn't think it would do what it did."

"Do you think I did?" Adam let Ronan keep hold of his hand, but he leaned down and smeared still-warm blood across his mouth.

Ronan's stomach dropped. His chest fluttered. All the blood in his body stopped and ran backward. His head spun, like he was high or dizzy. All his senses sharpened. Everything was caving in on itself. 

Adam made a sound like he'd been punched. His breath left him in a short burst and he steadied himself, one hand on Ronan's chest, the other on the bed. "Told you," he whispered. His cheeks shone red. His pupils ate up the blue in his eyes. "Tell me who you were fighting?"

"The me before you," Ronan said. His tongue ran across his bottom lip before he bit it. "The me that wanted to kill myself and everyone around me."

"That's quite a sacrifice," Adam said.

Ronan's heart galloped. He let Adam's hand go and set his palms on Adam's shoulders, smeared blood up the sides of his neck, onto his jaw. "Didn't think of it as that."

"I think of it as that." Adam opened his mouth for one of Ronan's fingers. "Let's not tell Gansey and Blue about this, yeah?"

A grin twitched on Ronan's mouth. "Which part? The sex magic, the blood magic, or this?" 

"This," Adam sighed. 

Ronan hadn't thought of sacrifices or old magic or ancient rites. He'd never thought of anything besides what they'd found - that forests could bring boys back to life, that men could become trees, that girls could see the dead, that some boys could hold the power of the earth inside them. Ronan had always thought his dreams were pieces of hell coming to the surface to find him. Sometimes he would fight them back enough to find light or touches or beautiful things. But he'd never looked into the darkness long enough to realize the things staring back at him were the things he wanted most.

The Magician.  
The Greywaren.

There was no such thing as magic without sacrifice, Ronan realized. They'd always ran from things that real, that raw, that dirty. But now Adam was crawling over him, pressing his bloody mouth to Ronan's, and they were bringing a forest back from the dead with their bodies and their blood.

"Do you have a knife?" Adam pressed the words against the shell of Ronan's ear. 

"Adam -"

"It can't just be yours," Adam snapped.

Adam nudged Ronan's legs apart with his knees. He pressed their groins together hard and bit back a moan. 

Ronan flailed an arm toward the nightstand. He kept one there - just in case - but it was buried under books and his headphones, and there. The cold edge of the knife touched his fingertips. Adam's mouth was on his neck, his teeth caught the bottom of his ear lobe. Ronan closed his eyes and, against his better judgement, pulled the black handled blade from the drawer. 

"I'm not cutting you," Ronan said quickly.

Adam grabbed the knife from him. "I figured."

"We're so fucked up." Ronan closed his eyes again. The dizzying, weightlessness combined with overdriven senses made Ronan feel like he was on fire, or had snorted too much coke, or was jumping off a building.

He heard Adam gasp, followed by the sound of the knife hitting the floor. Warm, slick fingers pressed down on his lips. He opened his mouth. Everything stopped and started. Adam's blood on his tongue was like something unfurling inside him, like being jolted awake. He felt power surge. He felt the ley lines sleeping in Adam's body rumble and twist. Everything made sense and didn't. The magic broken apart inside them slipped into place.

A surprised laugh tumbled out of Adam's mouth. He straddled Ronan's waist, eyes shut, index finger hooked in Ronan's mouth. "I didn't think we could do that," Adam confessed. 

Ronan's gaze traced Adam's body until he found the small mark on his collarbone. It wasn't deep, but a thin stream of blood leaked down his chest nonetheless. He tongued at the finger in his mouth. "What else do you think we can do?"

Adam's lidded eyes fluttered open. He withdrew his finger and grabbed Ronan's elbow, urging him to sit up, to run his hands over Adam's ass, his lower back. Ronan pulled their bodies together, he kissed Adam hard, tasting the coppery essence of his own blood and Adam's passed between their tongues. The dizziness died down, replaced by vibrations in the air, and power, magic, darkness, light - everything - thrashing around inside them. Ronan dragged his mouth across the small cut on Adam's collarbone. His hands splayed on the wings of Adam's shoulder blades, feeling them tense and relax. 

"C'mon," Adam demanded. He pulled one of Ronan's hands and shoved it between his legs. "Please, fuck, c'mon."

Ronan still wasn't used to Adam cursing so freely. It sounded stunted and pretty in his mouth. He pushed his chest until he fell backward on the bed, grabbed the container of dream jelly off the top of the nightstand and made quick work of his fingers. Before he did anything more, he paused, looking at Adam, covered in streaks of blood, on top of white sheets. "Turn over," Ronan said. He remembered the first time, weeks ago, and he remembered being pressed against the wall with Adam's mouth on him. 

Adam laid on his stomach. His thighs slid further apart when Ronan crawled between them. His breathing was shaky and nervous and Ronan loved it - he loved it when Adam stopped breathing altogether, when he arched his back and pushed against Ronan's open mouth. Most of all, Ronan loved the sounds. They were different than every other time, hungrier, louder. Adam clutched the sheets and gasped, moaned and cried out when Ronan pushed a finger in beside his tongue. He grinded down against the bed when Ronan squeezed his hips, cursed and said Ronan's name, and reached around to grab the back of Ronan's skull.

"Okay," Adam gasped out. "Okay, okay, enough, Ro -" His name turned into a gritted groan, forced between Adam's teeth. "I'm dyin' here, get on with it."

The dream blood stayed wet. Adam's blood dried. When Ronan pressed against the back of Adam's thighs, when he slid in and curved over Adam's back, warm blood smeared across his ass and shoulders and the stairs of his spine. 

"This is a ritual," Adam said quickly. He rolled his hips back, urging Ronan to move. "Try to think of Cabeswater. Force it to wake up."

"I can't think of the fucking forest right now, Adam." Ronan gave a sharp thrust and Adam keened.

"You're the forest, I'm the forest, we're both connected -" he gripped the sheets, his back arched, "to it."

Ronan stopped talking. He set his teeth on the nape of Adam's neck and fucked him hard against the stained sheets. The heat in Ronan's body bundled at the base of his spine. Adam choked on Ronan's name again, and Ronan swore he felt both syllables slither between his ribs. The magic was there, building, watching. It pressed down on them, was breathed in by them. Ronan stopped to flip Adam on his back. When he shoved Adam's legs apart, the magic whispered, when he pushed back inside him, Cabeswater sighed. 

Adam pulled on his face until their mouths met, lips hot and wet with dream blood and Adam and them. They swallowed each other, tongues pressed together, moaning into one another throats. It was then - right then - when Ronan felt it. He fucked Adam harder, faster. His thighs trembled. Adam stopped kissing him, because he couldn't keep up. There was too much. Too many wounded, sharp noises. Too much weighty black magic and too many eyes on them.

It felt like the whole world was watching. Ronan didn't care.

"There." Adam's nails dug into the back of Ronan's head and the middle of his back.

Ronan felt it. Adam's power came back to him like a lightening strike. 

"Jesus, fuck." Ronan chewed on Adam's throat, one hand gripping the back of Adam's knee, the other wrapped around his hip. 

Adam came shortly after. He curled into Ronan, gasping and whining, covered in blood, eyes and hands and heart of a magical forest.

Ronan pulled out and came across Adam's stomach. 

They looked at each other - wild, unruly, horrible things - and as Adam caught his breath he said, "How am I ever supposed to be with someone else after loving you?"

And Ronan's heart absolutely stopped.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote another blood fic. who's surprised? it's not me.  
> 


End file.
